Israel's War Against Hamas and the Fight Against Antisemitism

"Netanyahu's decisions may make it a whole lot harder for Jews to wage the battle against antisemitism going forward — but there will be no other choice. There never has been."

By Michael Golden

People who know me even a little bit might be surprised to learn that I often worry about whether I talk too much about antisemitism — or whether the Jewish people in general talk too much about it.

But I do.

Don’t get me wrong — working for Jewish causes over the years has been an important part of my life, which includes building JEWDICIOUS. I assembled our ‘Scribe Tribe’ of 18 Jewish voices in 2023 to write about everything under the sun — from the Jewish perspective that we share. And plenty of the pieces we’ve published confront antisemitism head-on and unapologetically.

But I still worry.

How much conversation or content about antisemitism might comprise “too much?” Therein lies the rub. It’s a tricky question. It reminds me of a classic episode of Seinfeld where “Uncle Leo” complains to Jerry about the burger he’s eating. When Jerry waves him off, Leo tells him that the cook must be an antisemite. Jerry is incredulous, pointing out that the cook doesn’t even know him. But Leo is adamant:

“They don’t just overcook a hamburger, Jerry.”

Later in the show, we see Jerry as a guest on The Tonite Show — crushing a routine about Leo’s plentiful and ridiculous list of accusations of antisemitism.

The bit is funny because, like many stereotypes, it emanates from some nugget of truth or general perception. But the reason I remember it well enough for it to pop into my mind while writing today is because I ponder that nugget myself. I just usually confine the debate to my own head.

Yesterday, I came across two things online that conspired to make me think more about this question — and put it down on paper:

1) I read an article by a Jewish writer named

Mijal Bitton

, who made the argument that Jews’ ‘shouting' about antisemitism is counterproductive. Bitton wrote:

“We have to stop sounding the alarm about antisemitism as a political strategy to get our neighbors to care. It's not working — and it may even be hurting us. We need to move from rage to strategy, from reaction to planning. We simply no longer have the luxury of acting from a place of emotion.”

I’m not sure I’d use the word ‘luxury’ to describe Jewish reaction to antisemitism — which is all too real and has snuffed out millions of innocent Jewish lives. But I do agree with Bitton’s observation that when we call out antisemitism — though righteous on principle — it does not move people emotionally to a place where they want to take up our cause. Not new people.

The goal that Bitton and I share of increasing allyship in the fight against antisemitism, as challenging as it already is, has been further complicated by how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prosecuted the war against Hamas in Gaza. Two weeks ago I wrote a plea for Netanyahu to try to make a deal — in good faith — to get the remaining hostages back and end the war. But I am all too aware of how easy it is for me to make such a demand from the safety of a keyboard, wearing a #BringThemHomeNow bracelet in an America that faces no immediate threat to our mortal existence.

While I struggle to understand the wisdom of what Netanyahu and his government are doing, I stop short of categorically indicting him for the brutalities that Palestinians continue to endure — in spite of my sympathy for them. My reasons include Hamas’ unspeakably barbarous assault that triggered the war, the terrorist regime’s stated belief and active goal of eliminating all Jews from the planet (which goes back to its original charter), and Hamas’ unwillingness to completely disarm and surrender. They have the power to do so at anytime; they choose not to.

The preceding two paragraphs will elicit furious condemnations from full-throated Netanyahu critics, and probably from some of his defenders as well. Though I am not shy about expressing opinions unequivocally, I see massive complexities in this war. Most people choose to see it in black and white. Let the judgments commence.

The truth is that the ways in which Israel defends itself is one of the most polarizing questions in international relations — and one that is not asked of other countries in the same fashion. For pro-Israel folks who also wonder how Netanyahu’s actions could ever be justified, I urge them to read U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Corn’s JINSA essay on national self-defense and military operational scale. If possible, with an open mind.

To say that “war is complicated” may be the most understated cliche of the entirety of human existence. And Israel is far from the only democratic country that has let the end goal of national survival justify the means of getting there. This is not to say that it is ‘right.’ But again, I am a U.S. citizen who knows some basic history about twentieth century wars.

Yet even for those who can fully rationalize how Netanyahu is conducting the war, when it comes to the fight against antisemitism, most would honestly concede that the world’s viewing of what’s happening in Gaza is not helpful. In a recent and widely circulated interview with The New York Times, Mandy Patinkin and Kathryn Grody (both Jewish) articulated their rage over Netanyahu’s decisions and actions, then described the corollary that no Jew wants. Grody spoke first:

“I feel the behavior, the politics of what he’s doing is the worst thing for Jewish people. It’s like lighting a candle for anybody who has any antisemitic feelings. It’s creating a generation of wounded and hurt kids who will understandably be very angry.”

Patinkin, whose anger was even more visible, gave a longer response. Embedded within it:

“I ask Jews all over the world to consider what this man, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his right-wing government, is doing to the Jewish people all over the world. They are endangering not only the State of Israel, which I care deeply about, and want to exist, but they are endangering the Jewish population all over the world.”

Grody and Patinkin were passionately making an argument that is logical — but not new. Notwithstanding the reputational damage that may turn out to be lasting as a result of Netanyahu’s actions, the truth is that for a very long time Jews have been put in the horribly untenable position of trying to take pride in our survival and success as a people — while at the same time feeling obligated to remind the world that we’ve been hated for thousands of years (and are hated still). It is factual and verifiable. Not hated by all, of course, but by enough to threaten the .02% of the world’s population we still represent. It is one of history’s all-time catch-22’s.

2) That extant threat brings me to the second item I came across yesterday, thanks to our Substack partner Dust & Stars: On July 13, 1934, in a speech before the Nazi Reichstag, Hitler took unabashed credit for the murder (‘purge’) of hundreds of his own officers as well as civilians. He referred to it as the “Night of the Long Knives” and proclaimed that by virtue of it he had become “the supreme judge of the German people.” No one blinked. Nazism was now the sole German party and Hitler its unquestioned dictator.

The Reichstag meeting at the Kroll Opera House, moments after Hitler gave his July 13, 1934 speech.

I don’t need to write the word ‘Holocaust’ for anyone to know what the previous three sentences were about. That’s because for 80 years, Jews have been telling and retelling the stories of the Holocaust. I, myself have interviewed and written about many survivors, produced TV segments about the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and helped to raise funds for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Yet along the way, I have occasionally wondered whether I (or we) talk about the Holocaust too much — in the same vein as my question about talking about antisemitism too much. I have often imagined that people, including some of my own friends — both Jewish and non-Jewish — may have silently been thinking: “Oy, Golden, change the record already.”

And then a day like October 7 happens. The unthinkable becomes not only thinkable, but excruciatingly real. And then the word “unthinkable” sounds ridiculous — because we all know better. We have seen it before: Kidnapping, torture, rape and mass murder by a ‘government’ with the express goal of exterminating all Jews. The difference is that this time Jews have a state of their own, and the haters are Israel’s neighbors.

A moment later in Mandy Patinkin’s answer, his voice rises to an emotional shriek as he makes a comparison various others have made during the war against Hamas:

“I ask you, Jews, everywhere all over the world, to spend some time alone and think, ‘is this acceptable and sustainable? How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and do it to someone else?’”

To me and millions of other Jews, this comparison is beyond controversial; it is offensive. Hitler’s Third Reich developed a Final Solution that was a totally unprovoked mission to systematically annihilate Jews. There was no attack on Germany. Nazis weren’t in any kind of defensive position against European Jews. They were murderous aggressors, period. And if all of those Jews had been confined to one geographic area and Hitler had a deployable nuclear weapon — not a single survivor nor descendant would have existed.

Not to be overlooked, Israel has repeatedly extended a hand to its Palestinian neighbors, yet they have rejected each opportunity and continue to refuse to even consider coexistence.

The late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for his efforts to make peace with former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, who rejected the final deal in 2000.

People who have serious criticisms of the way Netanyahu is fighting this war — and again, I have my own — are entitled to them. And the horrid consequences that Palestinians are suffering as a result of Hamas’ actions and Israel’s response may make the battle against antisemitism even tougher going forward. It also might not. Seemingly obvious forecasts about the future often have a way of disintegrating faster than a cross-border massacre.

But either way, the Jewish people will do what they have always done: Stand up for themselves. Push back against hateful narratives that are based on outright falsehoods or that obtusely ignore historical context.

All of this is not to say that the fight will be easy, but I can’t remember or find a single time in history when it was. No matter how tired some may get of hearing Jews railing against antisemitism and repeating ‘never forget’ themes borne of the Holocaust, hopefully they will understand that we don’t really have a choice. We do not enjoy talking about it; we feel we have a responsibility to talk about it.

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Less than a year before Hamas’ attack and the ensuing war, a visionary Israeli named Joanna Landau asked me to coauthor a book with her. It was entitled ETHICAL TRIBING: Connecting the Next Generation to Israel in the Digital Era. Joanna had already built a movement called ‘Vibe Israel’ that was focused on communicating the countless positive aspects of her country to Jews and non-Jews alike. In our Introduction, we wrote:

“The data strongly suggest that the challenge Israel faces in how it is perceived is just as much a wide-open opportunity to transform that perception. But it won’t happen unless we channel some of that Nachshon-style moxie by exploding the old mold and undertaking a new strategy, unrestrained by conventional wisdom.”

The world changed on October 7, and at the very least it delayed the prospect of effectively and broadly implementing the Ethical Tribing strategy. Both of us believe that a time will come, hopefully sooner rather than later, when the ground will once again be fertile enough to convey to new folks just what a wonderful Israel truly is.

But in the meantime, I will continue to defend against antisemitism and anti-Zionism as events and circumstances require. And I’ll try my best not to question whether I’m talking about it too much.

For there may be no such thing.

MICHAEL GOLDEN is the Editor-In-Chief of JEWDICIOUS and The Golden Mean.

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